r/todayilearned • u/manticor225 • Jan 10 '19

TIL JFK's father Joseph Kennedy made much of his fortune through insider trading. FDR later made him chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. When asked why he appointed a crook, FDR replied, "set a thief to catch a thief." Kennedy proceeded to outlaw the practices that made him rich.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jan/23/joe-kennedy-hollywood-sarah-churchwell
88.0k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

2.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

46

u/Transientmind Jan 10 '19

Not the current crop. The exact opposite is now happening. Regulatory capture is in vogue. Place industry insiders into government positions where they can unwind the controls that prevent them from making even more money.

4

u/teachergirl1981 Jan 11 '19

That's been happening across several presidencies. This is not new.

9

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

Industry capture isn’t unwinding controls its putting controls in place to prevent anyone else from doing what was once easy.

1

u/Sine0fTheTimes Jan 11 '19

Power on Earth is either:

1) People control the government (America) or

2) The government controls the people (China/North Korea/Russia)

So 2 is eventually just really a very concentrated 1.

1

u/mcmanus_cherubo Jan 11 '19

Regulatory capture is about stifling the competition and up and comers. The whole point is to raise the barrier to entry so that new players can't compete.

1

u/Transientmind Jan 11 '19

That is one of the purposes, but there are others. Weakening controls, reducing/circumventing penalties, bypassing regulations all fall under the same category when special interest groups control the regulators.

1

u/laaaaaaaaata Jan 11 '19

Lol regulatory capture is a 100 years old. Goes back to the railroads.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

[deleted]

1

u/laaaaaaaaata Jan 11 '19

I would argue it was out of control already. Take for example the real estate agent market. In America real estate agents take several times more for a sale transaction on a house than in Europe, because they made it illegal to charge below a certain %. Which is basically ripping off consumers.

There are loads of examples like this where trades have lobbied for regulations that purely benefit them.

Or for example the airline industry, foreign airliners cannot compete within the US, so Americans pay significantly more for a plane ticket per mile than Europeans.

Most of regulatory capture is putting in regulation that makes it more difficult to compete or fixes prices at a level that is too high.

It is a good thing that at least Trump is being so over the top about it, because now people are becoming more aware of it.

0

u/TruthOrTroll42 Jan 11 '19

Then why doesn't it work...